Consequentially
by bastioned
Summary: [postKH2] Happy endings sound really nice, in theory, but reality is rarely so simple, for one person or for all the worlds. And your former enemy living in your head is no help whatsoever. [Multichapter] [Rikucentric, eventual AnsemRiku]
1. i: in which Riku needs to stop being emo

_Post-KH2, somewhat AU multichapter monstrosity. Will eventually contain Ansem/Riku, a horde of FF cameos, and a plot. Maybe._

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**Consequentially**

i.

Happy endings sound really nice, in theory.

And for the first few days, when explanations were provided to disbelieving parents, and old friends were met and old hangouts revisited, and everything was beautifully normal and boring and familiar, it had seemed like things might actually work out.

Sora and Kairi were back to cheerful normality within a week, or at least they looked like they were. But Kairi hadn't really been gone, and Sora was _Sora_.

Thus far Riku's most noticeable achievement had been to summon his keyblade without thinking when a hand on his shoulder startled him awake, and come within a hairsbreadth of murdering his mother.

School was equally disastrous. He'd learned more than he'd ever wanted to about a lot of things, but none of them were much preparation for sitting in a classroom all day.

Things were not going well. Riku hadn't really expected them to.

Which explained why he slunk off to their island and sort of forgot to go home. If he couldn't wait in the world of darkness, he could… wait here, and keep an eye on everyone from a distance, and maybe someday he'd be fit for human society again. Just not now. Not yet.

He had a few precious days of solitude, during which he discovered that there were even fewer places to brood than he remembered, and you got really sick of fish every day when you were used to a new world's food every week.

Plus _someone_ had woken up in some godforsaken corner of his brain – his heart – and wouldn't shut up. He should probably be more concerned that sometimes the bastard even made decent conversation, when he wasn't sneering at Riku for being too weak to face the rest of the world, or going off on inevitable darkness-related rants.

For example. _Hiding from the Dark by sulking in the dark might not be the most logical course of action, you know._

"I thought you got killed by Ansem and his exploding gumball machine," snapped Riku. Now he was talking to himself and making light of a heroic sacrifice. His self-imposed exile was stubbornly refusing to have the effect he'd intended, damn it.

There was the predictable grumble at DiZ's true name. _My benighted fool of a teacher destroyed only the darkness inside you. I remain._

"There's a difference between you and the darkness?" he asked flippantly. Which was unfair, because, well. Wanting to further the cause of science was at the very least no worse than just wanting to get the hell off the most boring island chain in the multiverse, and now and then he had seen sparks of the decent person the Seeker of Darkness had been once. Proud, ambitious, young and far too sure of himself, but not _evil_. After all this he knew An— _Xehanort_ far better than he'd ever wanted to.

A chuckle. _Really, now? I don't recall that we ever _knew_ each other quite as well as I might have liked._

"You know what I meant, you terminally filthy-minded perv."

_You're amusing as ever when you're angry, my--_

"I'm not _your_ anything," snarled Riku, clamping down on the other and glaring into the fire. "And I'm not talking to you. Shut up."

Riku might almost have been content with things, even the fish and the disturbingly non-crazy voice in his head, except that the others knew where he was, of course, and it was too much to hope that they would leave him alone. Sora or Kairi or Sora-and-Kairi would row over every day or three times a day to tell him to stop being an idiot and come home, and when that didn't work, they recruited as many other people as they could find, until it started to feel like annoying Riku had replaced blitzball as the archipelago's major spectator sport.

Not that there _was_ much of anything to do on the islands, and the Amazing Reappearing Riku was bound to attract attention for a while, but this was beyond ridiculous.

Selphie and Tidus and Wakka showed up, inevitably, but so did a handful of other kids he barely remembered. A girl whose name he couldn't quite come up with proclaimed that she was still in love with him, to her companion's amusement. Tidus's father put in an appearance to yell at him to join the blitzball team. Principal Kramer dispatched someone with a rambling letter that threatened to have him arrested for truancy, as though the islands' entire police force wasn't two elderly men who never vacated their coffeeshop of choice.

He never saw his mother, but one morning there was a neatly wrapped box sitting on the pier, which turned out to be full of cookies and pastries and a note he refused to read. The box was from a bakery in town. She never _had_ been much of a cook.

A week slipped by, then two. School proved more of a distraction than the Angry Silver-Haired Hermit. Eventually the novelty of his presence wore off, and everyone but Sora and Kairi seemed content to leave him to his own devices.

Which didn't help, because they were the only ones he couldn't ignore, and sometimes it wasn't _just_ Sora and Kairi.

He wasn't exactly surprised when he woke up to Roxas standing over him with an expression somewhere between a glare and a pout that Sora had never worn in his life. _"Would you give it up already, you ass? You're depressing Sora and you know how hard it is to make him anything but happy."_

"I'm doing this because I care about him," Riku said lamely, hoping that Roxas didn't feel like resorting to violence, because there was _no way_ he was beating up Sora's body, whoever happened to be in charge of it at the moment.

But the Nobody only shook his head scornfully. _"Because you _care about him_. Maybe you should try being with your friends while you still have them."_

He'd hoped they'd give up eventually. They didn't.

"Look," said Kairi, crossing her arms and frowning at him. "I don't know half of what happened while you two were off playing hero and I was stuck here, because you won't tell me and Sora's too caught up on the lions-and-pirates-and-did-I-mention-the-store-in-Radiant-Garden-that-makes-the-best-fudge-ever to be coherent. But I know you faced a lot more than I did, and I guess your average Heartless is a lot less scary than Ms. Trepe's algebra class, but hiding out here isn't going to change anything." She sighed, kicked a coconut and sent it sailing off down the beach. "Just come _home_, you big stupidhead."

_Stupidhead_, Riku pointed out, wasn't much of an insult.

Kairi grinned and shot back with a string of considerably more effective insults. _"Larxene,"_ she said sweetly, with a smile that wasn't her own, when Riku had managed to stop gaping and ask where she'd picked that up.

"Naminé," he said. It was… almost creepy, to see her smile that genuinely. "I thought _you_ might understand."

_"I understand hiding,"_ she shot back. _"I understand being afraid to face things that are stronger than you are. But it's been a long time since I was ever like that, and I don't know why anyone would want to act like that when they don't have to."_

Then she was Kairi again, and no longer smiling. "I'm used to waiting. But it's really… pointless to have you right _here_ but still acting like you're lost out there somewhere."

Riku stalked off to the other side of the island and tried not to be disappointed when she didn't chase after him.

_They're right, you know,_ Xehanort said that night, because apparently everyone had to get in on these stupid motivational talks. Next thing he knew the King would put in a surprise reappearance to lecture him. _You have more skill at self-deception than you should, if you still cannot admit that._

"Whatever you think you're going to get from me, it's not going to happen," said Riku around a mouthful of the latest parentally-provided sweets. So much for solitude and independence. "Can't you go find something else to do?"

_Would that I could,_ Xehanort said wistfully.

Oh. Right. Better that he was stuck here, reduced to no more than an annoyance. Having to spend the rest of his life with tall, dark and loony bitching at him was more mercy than Riku deserved, even if he _had_ gotten the short end of the stick when it came to voices in his head.

The voice in question fell silent for a while. Hopefully bored enough to end the conversation prematurely, but more likely thinking.

_I'm merely attempting to find a way to phrase this that won't send you into paroxysms of adolescent fury. Understand that—_

"No."

_If you could accept the—_

"Oh, _hell_, no."

_…then _submit_ to—_

But there was an undercurrent of amusement and a definite lack of seriousness there, and Riku couldn't entirely hide his snort of laughter. Xehanort was… surprisingly hard to hate, when he wasn't being overtly evil. Which probably meant this was some sort of ploy designed to manipulate Riku into _something_, but still. Riku had kicked Xehanort's arrogant ass how many times now? If he was stuck with him, then _talking_ to him wasn't going to hurt. Let him pretend to be repentant if he wanted to.

_You will permit _me_ to flirt with contrition, but refuse any offer of forgiveness for yourself, when you have so clearly undone whatever wrongs you committed in the past? Go back to those who care about you. Entertaining though your self-hatred was at first, it turns boring after a while._

"I'm damned if I'm going to do anything because _you_ tell me to," said Riku, in a tone that was embarrassingly close to whiny.

_Then remain here,_ said Xehanort. _Escape the darkness only to spend the rest of your life reflecting on how much you loathe it. Linger on the edges of other people's lives without ever living your own for fear of what you once were._

The reversal was so painfully transparent it didn't deserve to be called manipulation. Xehanort sounded vaguely embarrassed with himself for resorting to it. But it was giving him an excuse, even if it was a really stupid one.

And the truth was that this was turning out to be even more of a disaster than sticking things out and trying for a happy ending had been.

"…Fine," said Riku. "In the morning. I'll stop being an idiot and go home and— figure out what I'm going to do now. Catch up with Sora in school, I guess, because there's no way I'm going to be a year behind him."

He stretched out on the sand to look up at the stars and the dark between them. "And, well, _maybe_ I can head off to other worlds again without blowing mine up this time? Can't be that hard to invent space travel mostly from scratch."

When Xehanort laughed he sounded far more pleased with himself than he had a right to be, but Riku couldn't bring himself to complain.


	2. first interlude: in which there is Zack

_So maybe calling this just an Ansem/Riku fic was sort of false advertising. Back to them _next _chapter. But here's __a character who damn well deserves to show up in KH, and an attempt at a plot and unexplained happenings and similar necessities__. It's lame, I know. It will improve, hopefully._

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**Consequentially**_  
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_first interlude._

Logic dictated that Traverse Town should have faded away once the darkness was defeated and the worlds restored, its purpose fulfilled, its continued existence unnecessary.

And it was true that it wasn't on such a prominent junction of the interspace currents as it had been once, but wherever it was, there were just as many garish neon lights as ever, and the town was anything but dead.

Some things can't be rebuilt and remade just like that, whatever heroics have gone on elsewhere, and not all the destruction in the worlds can be comfortably attributed to the dark and one (or two) amber-eyed enemies that could be dispatched with something as simple as a keyblade to the face.

Human nature makes more than enough messes without any outside help. Things happen. Worlds fall to pieces. People get lost.

So Traverse Town remained, inhabited by the handful of its original citizens who hadn't long since found a way to go somewhere else, and an endless stream of people with nowhere else to go who sooner or later found themselves washed up _there_.

Case in point. Tifa Lockheart, lately of Radiant Garden, currently of no fixed address, bartending at the Cheap Prayer in the first district. Looking for someone, but wasn't everyone?

And currently taking note of the stranger in the corner who kept sneaking looks at her when he thought she wouldn't notice. Which she was used to, considering she had plenty to look at, but it had been two hours and he wasn't drunk and hitting on her yet, and wasn't a tavern such a _classic_ place to meet a mysterious stranger in black.

…admittedly, the black was more of a faded dirty gray that might even have started out as blue, and it was more or less impossible to look appropriately enigmatic when your hair was that ridiculous. If it was any spikier it would have looked like a completely separate creature that might vacate his scalp at any moment.

And now _she_ was staring at _him_, damn it, and he seemed to take it as an invitation to amble over and grin at her across the bar. "Long time no see, Tifa."

"…how do you know me?"

A smile that was probably intended to be rakish. "Call it a lucky guess?"

Tifa wasn't in the mood for whatever game he thought he was playing. "I asked you a question. Tell me who you are." And why did she feel like she should _know_ that already?

"Zachariah Knightblade," he said, with a contorted motion that might have been an attempt at a gentlemanly bow. "But call me Zack or I won't know who you're talking to."

"That's nice, _Zack_." She put on a long-practiced expression of disinterest. "You planning on ordering a drink or just sitting here all night?"

"You planning on getting out of here or just rotting in Traverse Town forever?" he tossed back, and blurted out "I have a ship," before she could answer. His smile only widened at her indrawn breath. "_Fenris_. Used to be the Hollow Bastion's finest, before some entertaining hijinks I don't need to go into now."

She didn't know him. She damn well didn't trust him. But this might be the best – the only – chance she'd get for a long time. "Really, mister. You take passengers?"

"When they're drop-dead gorgeous ladies like you?" he said, grinning like an idiot now. "_Definitely_."

"If you think I'm going to pay for my passage with—"

"I wouldn't _dream_ of such a thing. I'm hurt, Tifa. What kind of guy do you think I am?" He slumped on the bar with a ridiculous pouting sigh. "Just take a look, huh? Can't hurt."

Well. It couldn't.

"…is that thing even fit to fly?" she asked, eyes narrowed, when she'd followed him out to where his ship was docked. "I don't think it was meant to carry humans."

"Eh-heh, well." Zack gave the… whatever-it-was that had been badly painted over the old Heartless sigil a pat. "She's kind of got a jury-rigged atmospheric recycler and the propulsion system could use a little work, but she hasn't fallen apart on me yet, and we've been together for years."

Tifa couldn't help laughing. "You sound like you're married to a gummi ship."

"Best friend I've got," said Zack, mock-solemn. "_Only_ friend I've seen in a hell of a long time. Haven't been home for a while."

"You're from the Garden?" she asked. There was _something_ familiar about him, anyway. Might be someone she'd forgotten from before, who'd been tossed up on some other world and been looking for friends and family as long she had. One of the string of boys who'd trailed after her like Cloud had, before he'd gone away to Midg--

What?

Before their false king opened a door he shouldn't have and the Heartless came, of course.

"Sort of,'" Zack said over his shoulder, interrupting her thoughts. He set about prying the hatch open and gave _Fenris_ a kick and a curse when it stuck. "I think."

* * *

_It was more than a little damaging to your big tough manly image, getting caught making your wife scrambled eggs while humming cheerfully and off-tune under your breath, but then coaching a bunch of schoolkids wasn't all that damn manly, either._

_"Jecht?"_

_"__What? I'm fixing breakfast for you, what _else_ do you want?"_

_She laughed and slipped an arm around his waist. "Where'd you learn that song? It's pretty."_

_"…eh. Just some dream, I guess."_

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This was displaying an embarrassingly lack of sense, even if Tifa was more than reasonably sure she could kick Zack's ass if he tried anything.

But he obviously wasn't all there, and she was seriously considering spending gods knew how long in a debately spaceworthy gummi ship with someone who could be a serial killer, for all she knew. Or just plain suicidal.

She hadn't followed him into the ship, only leaned on the door while he bustled around the single cramped cabin, but she stepped inside now, glancing around suspiciously. The inevitably brightly-colored surroundings offered no hint at their owner's personality. "You act like you know me and you act like you don't and you won't give me a straight answer to _anything_. Give me a reason to trust you."

Zack shoved a fall of tangled black hair out of his face, shrugged. "Sometimes you remember things that aren't true. You have a scar here-" he gestured sharply in the air in front of her, a line from breast to hip- "and you don't know why."

Tifa blinked. "Ahaha. Very funny. What have you been doing, spying on me in the shower?"

He snorted. "Dreaming, mostly. A word of advice – don't ever volunteer for some little science experiment right before some _other_ experiment goes boom. You end up stuck in stasis for years, and when you wake up the place is full of shadows and a crazy sorceress." The gummi ship's console lit up at his touch, and he went into a frenzy of button-pushing and lever-switching that was the most unreassuring launch sequence she'd ever seen.

"Do you _ever_ make any sense?"

"Aw, some people find insanity endearing." His expression turned serious. "You want the ride or not? Take it or leave it."

Traverse Town lulled you into routine while weeks and months slipped by and you barely noticed, and you forgot how much you hated your job and the customers and got used to being almost but not really content, like you couldn't hope for anything better. And not many people came here with their mode of transportation anything resembling intact. It was easy to stumble into town, but harder than you might expect to find your way out again, and if she didn't get out now, she was starting to think she never would.

What the hell. There were a million worlds out there waiting, and she wasn't helping anyone by sitting around here.

"You only live once, right?" she said, taking a purposeful step forwards and turning away from the open door, and Zack laughed like she'd been trying to be funny.

"I wonder about that sometimes."

* * *

_"Hey, Seifer? You ever have these weird dreams? With you except not you, and some creepy old lady and people we don't know?"_

_…there was the predictable silence at the predictable example of Rai being… Rai._

_"IRRELEVANT."_

_Raijin put up his hands up protest. "Don't get mad, I was just asking. Cause some of them are pretty damn weird, ya know?"_

_"They're just dreams," snapped Seifer. "You get philosophical when you're hungry, or what? Vivi needs to hurry his ass up with the ice cream."_

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They'd left Traverse Town behind them an hour ago and she still wasn't sure what her freshly-acquired companion was going on about.

"Guess I'm not making much sense, am I?" he finally admitted, sheepishly. "Hell, maybe all of you are right and I'm just crazy. I'm a soldier, not a metaphysicist. I need to find someone who can figure this out."

"Is that what you're looking for?" asked Tifa, from the corner of the cabin she'd curled up in. She was inclined to wonder whether she should be concerned that she'd fallen in with a madman, except, well, _Cloud_. She didn't know many people who were all there when it came to sanity, herself included.

"I guess," said Zack, his feet propped on the console. "That's one thing, anyway."


End file.
